Mind Drop #23 (07/14/2021) (Patreon)

Yo
How's it going, everyone? This post was supposed to be up last Tuesday but I had a major leak in my main PC's custom water-cooling loop. The machine has two 3090's and the top one was leaking coolant through the front plate screws all over the bottom card. The bottom card was completely soaked and was dripping onto the fans of the bottom radiator where it was then getting splashed all over my motherboard.
Somehow, someway after draining everything and taking everything apart and cleaning it, nothing was broken. It did take an entire day of cleaning and then troubleshooting because at first I wasn't getting any video from either card and even when I did it was omega scuffed. But... eventually I got it fixed and everything is running smoothly now.

But yeah, after that and coming down with a head cold the next day I decided to relax for a week. I originally wasn't going to but it felt like a sign to chill for a bit. 😁
I still did some render work as well as finish the environments for a few upcoming scenes. As well as make some background characters... but other than that I've been chilling.

The update wasn't 100% complete:
There are 2 scenes missing from the update that will be added in the next week or two.
1 of the scenes is the redo of the Bailey sex scene and the other is a scene that had a last-second issue. It was a fun little event at the pool party with a ton of the girls that took place after the butt contest and before going inside to talk to Moon. It was a scene that mainly focused on Kimmy.
There will not be a new post for it, I will just update the existing post with the new version and will let you guys know about it.

When can you expect the next release?:
When it's ready 😊
The next full update will be days 10-14. Which can sound daunting considering the latter half of day 9 took 5 months to make. But there's a lot of differences.
The biggest is that days 10-14 in its entirety won't be as many renders as day 9.
There was a theme with the update and that was getting things and relationships in order so the MC can focus on his career without having to worry too much about girls feeling left out or behind.
With this, updates will be less "This is everything that happened in this day fully explained and shown" to more "these are the main events of the day and you can infer what happened between them through dialogue or just from what you've seen in the past."

Also, the delays of Day 9 were mostly caused by my personal life. The whole eye issues, getting married, moving across the country, planning for a child.
And those things obviously aren't likely to happen again anytime soon. Or at least I hope not. 😁

Another reason for the delays that I haven't really talked about is me changing the animations after I moved. If you didn't notice there were a lot of animations and they were generally longer and some had transitions. That wasn't the case before I moved.
I personally feel that my animations are one thing that haven't improved as much as everything else and that was mainly due to where I used to live.
I had 3 PCs in 1 very tiny room and that room was in a very tiny house where 2 other people lived. We had a very shitty AC that would freeze up all the time, especially when I tried to make animations.
And I didn't mind the heat, but I wasn't going to put my grandpa or wife through that. So I usually would only render them bits at a time and mostly at night. And I never felt like I could make them longer or do anything special with them. I couldn't have my own AC because of how the windows were, I wasn't allowed to replace the one we had so I never really had the opportunity to try new things.
But with the new home I have all 3 pcs in their own room with its own AC. I never have to feel the heat from them so I can push them harder without it affecting anyone.

They definitely weren't perfect and I've already learned a lot more about how to improve them. So I'm excited for that, and it was something that wouldn't have been possible before I moved.

I do plan on doing "beta" builds for higher tiers. Either monthly or bi-monthly updates of a large chunk to make sure things are working as intended. And sometimes smaller updates if there's something specific I need tested on a larger scale.

Changes to tiers:
With me no longer wanting to do bi-weekly releases... I had to change things with the tiers.

Tier 0:

- Access to patron-only discord

- Access to weekly mind drop posts (weekly info posts that include 1-3 teasers images every week)

Tier 1:

- All previous benefits

- Access to full game updates 4 days after release

- Access to polls such as Rachael client polls

- Access to birthday renders channel on discord (Birthday renders for characters on their birthday... birthdays can be found on the character sheet)

Tier 2:

- All previous benefits

- Access to full game updates 3 days after release

- Access to monthly render sets (minimum 10 renders)

Tier 3:

- All previous benefits

- Access to full game updates 2 days after release

- Access to the larger beta build updates after a few days of testing and it is found to be stable and bug free

- Access to additional teaser images channel on discord

Tier 4:

- All previous benefits

- Access to full updates immediately upon release

- Access to all beta updates

These are subject to change and if you have any recommendations on things to add then please let me know!

Change in workflow:
I don't talk about it much but I work on the week 1 redo alongside new content. (And if you don't know what the week 1 redo is, it's just me redoing mostly the first 1-5 days with new renders and some changes in the story.) I'd say the split between the work has been around 75/25. I'll be changing it to more 50/50 going forward as some of the new content won't make much sense without the redo.

Upcoming Q&A/FAQ:
Questions and answers post is planned for this Sunday. I have many questions already lined up for it and it will be unnecessarily long. But if you have any additional questions to add then please let me know!

I don't want this post to be too long... a lot of the info I'll save for the Q&A.
I'm glad to hear that a large majority of you enjoyed the update. Mind drops will be back to their usual format next week.
As always, thank you all so much much for everything. You all are amazing.
Love you guys <3